The Home Place Audiobook By J. Drew Lanham cover art

The Home Place

Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature

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The Home Place

By: J. Drew Lanham
Narrated by: J. Drew Lanham
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About this listen

From the fertile soils of love, land, identity, family, and race emerges The Home Place, a big-hearted, unforgettable memoir by ornithologist J. Drew Lanham.

Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina - a place "easy to pass by on the way somewhere else" - has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, listeners meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be "the rare bird, the oddity".

By turns angry, funny, elegiac, and heartbreaking, The Home Place is a remarkable meditation on nature and belonging, at once a deeply moving memoir and riveting exploration of the contradictions of Black identity in the rural South - and in America today.

©2016 J. Drew Lanham (P)2019 Tantor
Cultural & Regional Environmentalists & Naturalists Nature & Ecology Heartfelt Funny Inspiring

What listeners say about The Home Place

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Heartfelt Storytelling Vivid Descriptions Excellent Narration Wonderful Storyteller Beautiful Writing Style
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Beautiful Description and Storytelling

J Drew Lanham is a beautiful storyteller. The words are rich, intimate and bring the reader (listener) fully into his experience and world. I really loved his book and his narration.

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Wonderful book!

I was already familiar with Dr. Lanham as a birder and scientist, and was delighted to discover his talents as a writer. This is a beautifully written book with the added benefit of narration by the author.

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Wonderful story, Told beautifully

I really enjoyed this book. J. Lanham has a wonderful way with words and descriptions with science and poetry all mixed into one great book. I highly recommend!

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Work worth reading

Should be required reading for high school students and teachers. Also book clubs. Thought provocin

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Beautifully Done

I have so enjoyed listening to this book. You can feel the author’s love for his home place, his family and the land.

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Loved it

Thank you for sharing your story, and including all the ancestors (human and otherwise) and history.
Beautiful.

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Budding Ornithologist in the making!

I so loved this book! I read it in my quest to teach my young students about an African American Ornithologist for Black History Month. My Kindergartens affectionately call him the ‘brown birder’ and are so excited when Its time to learn something else about Dr. Lanham. My son, who is a recent environmental studies graduate, turned me onto Dr. Lanham and I have not looked back. Great laugh out loud moments from his upbringing that are so familiar and so much more that made me want to learn more about nature. What a rich, familiar, heartfelt story! Loved every second of it! Thank you for sharing it with us!

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wonderful!

This is one of my best reads from the last 5 years. His storytelling combines ornithology, ecology, farming, rural experiences, and his own personal view on black history. His ability to deliver insight and passion in simple and compact phrasing made this a difficult book to put down. Everyone should read it.

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Loved the insight!

I loved Mr. Lanham's accent and his insight into his connection with nature. I was grateful to be able to hear his stories about how race affected his connection with nature and how it had nothing to do with it. The focus of this book remains: his love affair with nature.

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My heart grew

My heart grew because of this book. Professor Lanham's writing is now beautifully etched in my heart and constant in my thoughts. This was one of those few in a lifetime books that I constantly seek, nurture and hold sacred. This book changed me and I promise that your reading will bestow unknown and unconditional gifts. We, the readers, are so grateful for the entire Lanham family and how what came before, what is and what will become is always found in the nature and land around us.

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2 people found this helpful